Ignorant and rude operating – A rant

I got home from work this evening and within about thirty seconds of getting in, the phone rang. It was Tony, G0MBA so I put the wireless on and we had a chat on 28MHz. Tony was on the outskirts of Colchester in his van and was a good signal with me.

As we signed, he said that the band was open and that there was a good callsign down on 28.460 – D44AC, Carlos. I had no idea what country that was so I looked it up to discover that it’s Cape Verde which is a DXCC entity I’ve not worked before.

He was very strong with me so I called a few times and then I stopped calling when he was asking for North America.

I was quite saddened to hear an M0 located not far from me who continued to call him. Not only did he call him repeatedly when he was asking for North America, he called when Carlos picked up a couple of letters and asked for them. These letters weren’t in this M0 stations callsign. He called, repeating two letters of his callsign over and over again. He called when Carlos himself was transmitting. His operating was terrible and I was embarrassed to hear it. He seemed to give up after a while and stopped calling. I gave up as well and tuned around to hear the same station doing exactly the same thing to a Brazilian.

I don’t know whether he finally managed to work these two stations or not, in all honesty I hope he didn’t. I know we often complain about the operating procedures of some people located in Southern Europe but it really saddened me to hear someone in the UK behaving this way on the wireless.

Before anyone asks, no, I didn’t make a note of his callsign, all I remember from qrz.com is that he’s located within about ten miles from me as the RF travels.

This kind of operating really annoys me. I can appreciate that sometimes it’s difficult to break a pileup but there’s always going to be another chance to work the DX. It doesn’t have to be done NOW and there’s nothing wrong with a bit of politeness.

Me too, I thought we were supposed to gentlemen and ladies on the airwaves, in the nicest possible way. I hear some shocking operating at times, and think “these guys have been at it a lot longer than me – whats the story?” and also downright rudeness. Its either rudeness, pigheadedness, or just not listening…the curse of European ham radio I sometimes think…..

Hi Keith, this story sounds like mine a few months ago. Seems in the Netherlands it’s the same as in the UK. You can find my article about it here. I hope you can make it to Cape Verde some time…
73, Bas